Ages, Stages, and Phases

The first chapter of this book is titled "Ages, Stages, and Phases". This chapter is basically an introduction to discipleship and God's blueprint for every believer's life.  To begin with this chapter talks about the three ages that a believer lives in and each of these ages coorespond to a pair of elementary teachings.

The first age is the believer lives under the rule of Satan, sin, and death and the pair of elementary teachings that coorespond with this age are repentance and faith in God.With repentance and faith in God it delivers the person out of this age into the second age which is the age where the believer is now under the rule of Jesus Christ but still lives in this world which is ruled by Satan. This age cooresponds to the two elementary teachings of baptisms and laying on of hands.

The third age is the age yet to come which is the age of Christ's return and Millenial Reign and this third age corresponds to the pair of elementary teachings of the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgement. This can all be summed up as how we are to exit out of Satan's Kingdom and enter the Kingdom of God, what life is once the believer is in the kingdom, and the things to come, Jesus's Return, millenial reign, judgement of all and of the believers faithfulness to the kingdom of God.

The next section in this chapter talks about our stages as believers. These stages are babe, child, young man or  young woman, and father or mother. In these stages you as a believer need to get the spiritual diet required for that particular stage so that you can grow mature in faith, however you dont give a baby meat nor an adult milk.

The last two sections in this chapter deals with the spiritual phases in a disciples life and the primary methods. The spiritual phases are God's blueprint for discipleship and these phases are: foundation, transformation, formation, impartation, and multiplication. Each of these phases deal with one of three components of our makeup; spirit, soul, and body. The foundation phase deals with the spirit, the transformation and formation with the soul which consists of mind, will, and emotions effecting our character and behavior and the impartation and multiplication deals with the body.

Lastly the primary methods or four "M"'s are  the primary factors that help the believers spiritual development. These are: Ministry of the Word, My Role, Modeling Community, and Mentoring.